1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image information synthesizing terminal equipment used as a display terminal for information processing systems such as computers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, information processing utilizing computers has expanded its domain and also increased its versatility and comprehensiveness. It is now applied to process control in addition to office jobs and scientific calculation.
For example, in process control of various chemical plants and the like, the computer performs control, monitoring and data recording for the process. The most important aspect is that information is transacted smoothly and surely between the computer and the operator (i.e. man-machine communication).
Between the operator and the computer, information is transacted through a terminal equipment referred to as a console, which typically includes a CRT (cathode ray tube) display because of the following advantages.
1. A large quantity of information can be displayed on the CRT screen at one time.
2. Color display is possible.
3. Graphic patterns, tables and graphic panels can be displayed in addition to literal and numeric characters.
4. Quick response of display is achieved without noises.
5. Various graphic patterns can be displayed alternately on the same CRT screen.
The CRT display of the console has been used to display alphabetic and numeric characters. There is a trend in using the CRT screen for displaying a combination of graphic patterns, tables, process flowsheets, graphic panels, Kanji, and the like in order to achieve more comprehensive communication between the computer and the operator. Recently there has also been a further need of providing acoustic information output in addition to graphically displayed information as mentioned above.
The conventional terminal equipment, however, could only display information retrieved from the computer, and in order to satisfy the above-mentioned requirements it would necessitate a considerable manpower for developing output programs, a large storage capacity for storing the software and a vast support software package, and also would pose an overhead problem for the computer.
It is desirable to create the screen format in the ordinary use language or one that can be understood by the user (e.g., French, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, etc.). Therefore, the screen format must have been amended each time to meet the user's language, resulting disadvantageously in a further increase of software for displaying information.
Prior Art in this area include Japanese Patent Publication No. SHO 49-21970 which corresponds to Swedish Pat. No. 349,165, EPC application No. 79300383.1 which is published as 4,197 to RCA corp., and IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin Vol. 22 No. 3 Aug. 1979, PP 1200.about.1201, "Extended Function on Character Display".